Most Productive Day. Ever.

Sometimes, the Muse sings. Sometimes, you have a really good work day and you get a lot done. Sometimes they both happen at once and you get a massive amount of genius. Yeah, I don't mean to brag, but today was a massive amount of genius.

As I edited my first draft today, I found that a few scenes were missing. So I added those. I typed up the pages I had marked from my hard copy pass, too. Overall, I edited 36 pages of manuscript and added nearly 4,200 words to the original work!
Thanks to Liquid Story Binder, I know that it took me all of six hours of actual work to do it.

I have never written that many words in one day before. Ever. Not in first drafts, not during NaNoWriMo. 4,200 words is a lot. To put it in perspective, if I wrote this many words every day, I could finish a novel in 12 days.

So, bear with me as I bask in my own glory. **sigh** ;)


**Just a side note, I'm not that into myself. It's supposed to be funny

How to Get More Writing Done

I'm back from my little experiment. I took off nearly a week from the internet in order to get more writing done.

First, if you think you might want to do this, you need to realize that if you shut down your internet access (and, as I did, your computer access) that a bunch of other things will try to fill in your time gap. I had no idea how many things I wasn't doing. Seriously.

But, not having the distraction of the computer did help my writing. No question. I revised a huge chunk of my book and wasn't pressured by my goal of fifteen pages a day. I hit the mark with ease :)

I was more focused when I wasn't working, too. If I was doing something else, my mind was a little clearer and I could think about my writing and what I wanted to change, and all that good stuff, so I was more efficient when I did sit down to work.

And when I came back? I turned on my computer and sorted through emails, checked (and read) the blogs I follow, checked and replied to a slew of forum posts, checked facebook, etc... all in about three and a half hours! Over the course of five days, I usually spend closer to ten hours doing all that stuff. An amazing time saver, though I may have missed some stuff.

So, I'm halfway done with the hard copy edit of my ghost novel. My goal is to finish by the end of the month, then do my soft copy edit. (Basically, going back and typing in all the edits and notes I made on the hard copy.) That leaves me with querying agents. I should be done with plenty of time to plan my phantom novel for November.

So, my next post will be on revising a manuscript. I've searched for different methods in preparation for what I'm doing now, and I'll share the best of it with you.

Tomorrow. I'm exhausted.

Hope all is going well with your writing!

A Problem and a Challenging Solution

Okay, so I've got an interesting problem to deal with. I'm almost done with my first draft. I've got two very short scenes, one really long scene (the final battle!) and then another quick one to wrap it up. Only problem is, this was supposed to be a 60,000-word novel and I'm only at 32k!

A little tip for other writers: filler is bad. I don't want to use filler.

So what do I do?

Fortunately, I've already planned to go back and insert entire chapters from Nathan (my hero's) point of view. This will add depth to my love story, a new voice, maybe a little history (because he is a ghost after all), and we can see the heroine from another perspective.

(I expect the unexpected to happen when I do this. My muse likes the throw some cool stuff on the page when I do stuff like this. )

And then I'll add a romance for poor Lisa, who has desperately wanted a boyfriend since chapter 1.

I'll also rewrite some of my current scenes from his perspective and see which is better. Then, I'll go back to the beginning and add rich detail, a LOT more conflict (I've decided life's been way too easy for Rachel), and a ton of showing (vs. telling).

I should get my words in, but this is going to take a lot of planning.

First of all, when I finish the first draft I'm taking a break! Maybe two weeks. I'll work on my phantom project, maybe catch up on my reading, stuff like that. Then I'll go through what I have and write out what I'm hoping to get out of each scene. What do I want to tell the reader? How do I show it instead? What's the conflict? What could make it worse? How would EACH character (present or not) react? What are my characters seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling, tasting, thinking, doing, and saying? What do they want to hide from the other characters? What other motivation might they have?
etc...

Yeah, it's a long process, but the product that comes from it is more than worth it!
Then, I read through a hard copy of my book, writing in comments, suggestions, thoughts, and nit-picky edits. THEN I go through a soft copy and actually MAKE all those edits. (By now I'll be exhausted.)

I'd like to get all of this done by October 1st. (I know, good luck, right?) That way I'll have a full month to plan my phantom project in time for NaNoWriMo.

Think I can do it?

We'll see.

By the way, the Writing Tip of the Day is:
Never resist editing, because your writing isn't etched in stone and can always be improved for the reader.

How appropriate.